The biggest names on Wall Street just wrapped up their strongest three months for stock-related deals since 2021.
Morgan Stanley took in $851 million, up 70% from the same period last year. JPMorgan Chase collected $829 million in equity advisory revenue - a 78% increase.
What drove all that activity? Two things mainly: a massive wave of fundraising for artificial-intelligence infrastructure, and SpaceX's record-setting IPO.
Goldman also helped Alphabet Inc., Google's parent, raise over $85 billion in equity capital. That is the kind of deal that shifts entire quarters.
The real engine here is AI. Companies need enormous amounts of cash to build data centers, buy chips, and secure energy. David Solomon, Goldman's CEO, put it this way: "The AI investment cycle is expanding capital needs into infrastructure, energy and data centers, generating a ripple effect across industries."
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Morgan Stanley projects global AI spending will hit $1.3 trillion next year. Every dollar of that needs to come from somewhere - and banks are the ones helping raise it.
The boom is not limited to straight stock sales either. So far in 2026, the total value of equity-linked offerings like convertible bonds - debt that can later be turned into shares - reached more than $166.7 billion worldwide. That is an 82% increase from 2025.
Walter Todd, a portfolio manager at Greenwood Capital Associates, noted that banks took advantage of "extreme equity market and individual stock volatility" early in the quarter. In other words, when markets zig and zag, companies that need cash tend to move quickly.
The current surge in stock-related deals recalls the feverish activity of early 2021, when SPAC mergers and low interest rates pushed quarterly volumes to record highs. But the drivers now - AI infrastructure and blockbuster IPOs - represent more durable capital needs, suggesting that Wall Street's fee pipeline could remain full for quarters to come.
The big question is whether this is the start of a long run or just a one-quarter spike.
JPMorgan's CFO Jeremy Barnum offered a note of caution: "Clearly there was some pull-forward, and clearly the large deals contributed meaningfully to this quarter's results." Some of that revenue came from deals that were pushed into the quarter ahead of schedule - meaning the next one might not match it.
Still, the pipeline looks promising. Banks are already competing to land Anthropic's potential IPO, possibly as soon as October. Another mega-deal like that would keep fees flowing.
Ted Pick, Morgan Stanley's CEO, said that despite "geopolitical noise," "the US economy and consumers remain resilient." If that holds, the demand for fresh capital is likely to keep coming - and Wall Street will keep collecting its cut.
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